Deborah Kurrasch, PhD

Dr. Kurrasch founded Stream Neuroscience to develop drugs addressing unmet needs in neurological disorders. She was recently honored with the Alberta Science and Technology Foundation Women in Innovation award for her entrepreneurial achievements and is a nominee for 2024 Canada’s Most Powerful Women: Top 100.

In addition to her role as CEO of Stream Neurosciences, Dr. Kurrasch is a Professor and Deputy Department Head of Medical Genetics at the University of Calgary. Research from her lab led to the creation of MitoREAD, a patented drug discovery platform leveraging the potential of neurometabolism to uncover novel drug targets. She is an expert in neuropharmacology and disease modeling, and she is an early innovator of patient-derived brain organoids as a model system in drug discovery. Dr. Kurrasch has authored over 70 publications in prestigious journals such as Science, Cell, Neuron, Developmental Cell, and PNAS.

Dr. Kurrasch earned her PhD in Molecular Pharmacology from Purdue University and completed postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas and the University of California, San Francisco.